Photos: Ohio man says iPhone XS Max caught fire and exploded in his pocket

9to5 Staff | Dec 29 2018 - 3:36 am PT

A man from Columbus, Ohio claims that his less than one-month old iPhone XS Max caught fire and exploded in his pants pocket around December 12, iDropNews reports. The man, Josh Hillard, says he initially noticed a strange smell emanating from his rear pant pocket, before feeling a “large amount of heat” allegedly burn his leg.

While the man says he’s already been in contact with Apple regarding the matter, their offer of a replacement hasn’t seemed to bode well, who says he’s already exploring his legal options against the company.

From the time of first noticing the fire and between removal of the pants and taking the phone out of my pocket and placing it outside, I inhaled A LOT of smoke

Hillard says he took a trip to the Apple store later that evening with the melted device, and details his dissatisfaction with Apple’s inability to address his damaged clothing nor offer a new phone on the spot rather than wait to ship it in as offered.

After spending about 20 minutes with an employee and answering questions, she removed the SIM card in effort to pull up my profile but it was melted.

The employee told me that she had to call the safety team and took the phone to a back room and did not return or update me on the status of my problem for about 40 minutes. After receiving this cold treatment with zero engagement from the team while waiting, I found a manager to locate the employee with my phone.

The employee resurfaced with the phone already packaged and told me that they were going to send it back to the engineering team. The manager then came up to me and said that this is the only way that I could receive a replacement phone.

I was given no other option and was told that nothing could be done for me in store if they could not keep the damaged phone. I asked about my clothing and they told me that they could make no promises until the phone was captured. I left one hour before the store closed and unsatisfied with the customer service in store, I took back the damaged phone and returned home.

The man claims he just purchased the iPhone XS Max around three weeks prior to the incident — leaving little room for long-term battery abuse to be playing a factor here.

Though 9to5Mac hasn’t authenticated the veracity of the explosion outside of iDropNews‘ report, we’ve added the full image gallery of the alleged faulty device for you to judge for yourself below.

The four photos of the supposed exploded iPhone XS Max, courtesy of Josh Hillard via iDropNews

The last time an exploding iPhone made headlines was back in November of last year, when an iPhone X device exploded instantly after being upgraded to the latest iOS 12.1 software update at the time. Apple described the incident as “definitely not expected behavior” on Twitter.

What do you think about the first report of an exploding iPhone XS Max? Let us know in the comments below!